I Stand Corrected (5 page)

“What kind of messages?”

“Well, each handshake has a message that tells you something about the person. The more you shake hands, the better you get at decoding. But first we have to code your own handshake.”

Curiosity took hold. “How do we do that?” asked Gilliam.

“You need to decide what you want to say about yourself,” I told him. “Your handshake is a way of saying it without words.”

“Do you mean what I want to be when I grow up?”

“Okay, that’s one way of thinking about yourself. So what do you want to be?” I asked.

Our recent bedtime reading had been Greek mythology. Without hesitating, Gilliam answered, “A god.”

“I think what you are saying about yourself is that you want to be considered important. Someone to pay attention to. So you should shake a man’s hand with confidence. One tug down”—I took his small hand in mine—“like this. Not up-and-down and up-and-down, but just once—a little up and more down and then let go. It will be a signal that you mean business. And be sure to look him in the eye.”

We practiced a few times before I thought Gilliam was ready for the ladies’ handshake.

“Remember, women are different,” I said. “You take their hand if they extend it, and then you shake gently.”

In his eagerness to get on with it, Gilliam suggested we practice both versions.

“Before we do, would you like me to tell you a riddle?”

Willingness stretched only as far as the issue at hand. “Does it matter?” he asked impatiently.

“I think it does. But maybe you’re too young to be told. Maybe we should wait.”

“Tell me,” he insisted.

I lowered my voice. “All women like one thing. This one thing is so precious that it doesn’t have a price.”

Gilliam’s brow knotted in concentration.

“No amount of money can buy it,” I continued. “But—here’s the riddle—it’s also free.”

“What? What’s free that every woman wants?” he wanted to know.

“Women want men to treat them like ladies.”

“How do you do that?” he asked, ready to do what it took.

“Like everything, it starts with the handshake,” I said, inviting him back into the game. “When you shake a woman’s hand, make the slightest bow. Remember King Arthur’s tales? His knights bowed to the ladies. Not too much of a bow … a half bow. A little chivalry goes a long way. I’ll tell you what, you stand behind the door, and when you knock, I’ll open it, but you won’t know whether I’m pretending to be a man or a woman until I say.”

He knocked on the door. I’d open it, saying either “I’m a man, how do you do?” in an artificially deep voice or “I’m a woman, how do you do?” The game lasted until Gilliam felt confident.

For months afterward, he sailed effortlessly from one gender-specific handshake to the next, until his father—who had written a play—brought him along to pick up the manuscript pages from his typist, whose name was Phyllis. What had not been clear until his second encounter with Phyllis was that
she was not completely a she. Phyllis—previously Phil—was in between, so to speak. She was what is known as an “early tranny,” a transsexual who had added breasts but had not yet subtracted the last—and most vital component—of manhood.

Phyllis opened the front door to her East Hollywood bungalow, took one look at Gilliam, and, in words textured by crushed velvet intonations, asked, “How do
you
do?”

Greeted by a person whose appearance didn’t seem to rest securely in one gender, the boy quickly abandoned any attempt at a cognitive decision on which handshake to employ. Acting on instinct, he hid behind his father. That night, after considering the issue from both sides, Gilliam volunteered that, if there were to be another occasion to greet Phyllis, he would give her a slight bow, because—regardless of what gender she was—one thing was obvious: Phyllis wanted to be treated like a lady.

PART TWO
The All-Important Display of Deference

Do not worry about holding a high position, worry rather about playing your proper role.
—
Confucius

A
rithmetic is on the side of China.

The huge nation—with 20 percent of the world’s population—has an unprecedented range of overseas investments projected to be worth between $2 trillion and $3 trillion by 2020, a state-sanctioned bank that supplies over half the world’s total liquidity, and a self-appointed government that seeks access to global markets and resources.

Chipping away at not only the edifice of America’s global dominance but also its self-belief, China’s state-owned firms have sought out iconic Western companies for direct investment, taking stakes in Greece’s largest port, Portugal’s biggest power plant, London’s Heathrow Airport, the British utility company Thames Water, and Canada’s energy giant Nexen, to name a few.

There was a time when Westerners assumed the Chinese would convert to Western ways. But China did not become more like us, particularly in regard to business. We voice our misgivings as we count the ever-increasing dots China makes on the world map. That is no matter to China, which will ignore our moralizing about human rights while it continues to buy into Western companies, absorb Western marketing and branding know-how, locate and exploit natural resources, build other countries’ infrastructures, and make loans to the deficit-hobbled rest of the world.

Despite China’s global importance, its domestic economic growth has not included all of its citizens equally. That can be said about most other nations, but unlike other nations, China has used its position as a world economic leader to fund the solutions to its own problems. It is doing this by identifying strategic partners in countries whose governments welcome China’s cash flow and are relieved that China is willing to stay clear of local politics.

For good or for ill, the long-term mission of several emerging markets—Africa, for example—is being shaped by the Chinese. Chinese prisoners are sent to Africa to build infrastructure there so that China has access to the continent’s natural resources; and to grow food there, which is shipped back to China.

Some suggest this is bound to have political side effects. Others insist it pits China’s state capitalism against fair competition. Speculation on these issues will undoubtedly continue, for it can be accurately said that any attempt to completely understand the Chinese is unlikely. “[The Chinese] are always doing something or saying something that rubs rudely against my hypothesis [of a conception of Chinese character],” wrote George Wingrove Cooke, a China correspondent for the London
Times
. That contentious claim was made in 1857, and there has been little breakthrough in cross-cultural understanding since. But I am unconvinced that China is fomenting a global economic conspiracy in attempting to restore the wealth and power—
fuqiang
—it systematically lost during the last century. China is not sighted on the world’s horizon line because it cannot afford to take its eyes off its own profound challenges. The ruling Communist Party seems to me focused primarily on staying in power, and its methods are grounded in functionality.

Despite the speed and scale of China’s ascent, failed attempts by foreign companies to monetize China’s vast population litter its landscape, and so it is prudent for Western businesspeople to understand that there are two Chinas. China is the world’s most dynamic economy, and at the same time it is a developing country where business often veers off course.
Westerners should keep their wits about them to avoid being led into a bog of murky information.

It is not by mistake that it is difficult to parse the significance of official documents. Due diligence—standard in Western countries—is often prevented by Chinese participants with vested interests in suppressing information and the political connections to do so.

Conducting any business in China comes with a learning tax. I paid mine by holding the dimly lit view that business in China thrives on inconsistencies. Had I seen what was squarely in front of me, I would have recognized that, in practice, consistency is reflected in the deference with which the Chinese approach everything.

How one exchanges business cards, for example—and the deference associated with it—often affects the outcome of a business opportunity. In the East, exchanging cards is a surrogate for the Western handshake. Cards appear at every occasion—business or social—even when it is unlikely that you will ever again see the person you are meeting. China’s middle managers might be carrying several different cards for the simple reason that it is not at all unusual to hold simultaneous positions in various—and sometimes entirely unrelated—companies.

Having conflated their personal interests with that of the state, senior Chinese executives are committed to one company at a time. They take themselves seriously and expect a show of deference from their Western counterparts, especially when introductions are made. A double-sided Western business card with simplified Chinese on one side is the first indication of respect; its conspicuous absence is not unlike refusing to shake hands at the start of a Western business meeting.

Business cards in China are an extension of the person to whom one is being introduced, so Westerners would be wise to make sure theirs are not only immaculate but are offered in the proper fashion. It is up to the Westerner to present his card first, done with two hands—the card Chinese side up—and facing your contact so he can read it. Even if you are familiar with his title and position, deference is shown by studying
the card he has ceremoniously given you and then deliberately placing it within clear sight if you are sitting around a conference table.

Common sense dictates that under no circumstances should you clean your fingernails during a meeting, much less use someone else’s business card to do so. Unfortunately, common sense was nowhere to be found when an American colleague used the tip of a business card to dislodge what was under his thumbnail and, in so doing, derailed our chances of a successful outcome.

In all fairness to my countrymen, I cannot claim a faultless record of behavior in China despite my many years of travel there. Cultural misunderstandings have opened up beneath me like sinkholes, and the most fundamental procedures have often resulted in my best and worst impulses overlapping. The rudimentary procedure of a business meeting can invite any number of potential mishaps in the East.

During my meetings with Chinese book editors, the East-West gap declared itself with a matchless range of unrecognizable methods and manners. The first of those meetings was to take place over lunch. I arrived at the designated restaurant at the designated time, which was noon—precisely the time the editor phoned to ask if I was where we had agreed to meet.

“Where the hell else would I be?” I muttered to myself after reassuring him. Of course I would wait for his arrival, I told him. Having rushed to get to the restaurant of his choosing so as not to keep him waiting, I waited the forty minutes it took for him to get there. It was enough time to realize that the Chinese way of doing things was so removed from anything I would ever understand that it hardly seemed worth the effort for me to be outraged.

“Time is money” is the unrelenting warning from Westerners. Inconvenient as it is for them, the definition of time in China does not designate when one hour gives way to the next. Noon, which to me is as definite a time as any other, can be employed by the Chinese as a two-hour period from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.

My personal take on time is of little consequence in countries that function with a far less rigorous version of it. Since different cultures interpret time in different ways, I learned that in China it was best to set meetings in the offices of those with whom I intended to meet. My next meeting—with CITIC Publishing Group, whose parent company is China’s largest state-owned investment entity—was held in its conference room.

In the West, it is customary to open a meeting with a relatively short introduction and to concentrate on issues that require discussion or decision. The meetings with my potential Chinese publishers evoked a séance-like feeling and were frustratingly nonparticipatory. I later realized that the staff of each had such an extreme reverence for the passively assertive director seated at the head of the table that rarely did anything actually happen. After sitting through these endless, action-deprived meetings, I couldn’t begin to guess why they resulted in enthusiastic offers from all four publishers. That didn’t prevent me from being delighted, and I chose Xiron Publishing Company, a non-state-owned but state-controlled publishing house run by young and eager managers.

My agent secured a deal in two weeks. I was given three months to complete a guide to Western business etiquette, unaware that I was one of very few Westerners collaborating with a Chinese publisher in order to produce a book exclusively for a Chinese audience. That fact alone was enough to bring me to the attention of the government authorities, who ordered the publisher to scan my visa.

After signing a contract written in Chinese, oblivious to government censors looking over my shoulder, I began to write the kind of book the Xiron editor told me he wanted.